Human Motivation: How Do You Turn This Thing On?

The Psychology and Neuroscience Behind Human Motivation and How to Actually “Get it to Work”  

The beginning of a new year tends to stir up ambiguous expectations and well-intentioned resolutions for many. Along with it also typically comes the eventual and seemingly inevitable “falling off the wagon” – a phenomenon so commonly experienced amongst resolution-setters that it’s received its very own day of recognition not so delicately titled National Quitter’s Day. That’s right. Research shows that, by the second Friday of the year, an average of 80% of people who made a New Year’s resolution are running on fumes at best and even more likely have completely let off the gas toward their goals and given up completely. That makes January 9 of 2026 the marker where the goals of most people will have lost their luster and the pursuit toward those goals will have faded or ceased altogether. Try again next year, right?   

Have you ever found yourself to be in that special group of honorees for National Quitter’s Day, struggling to keep committed to your personal resolutions? Maybe in a more general sense, have you found yourself struggling with motivation to press on toward certain goals or areas of change in your life no matter the time or circumstance of year? Have you ever wondered about the workings behind that and why sometimes it feels so impossibly difficult to get yourself to do the thing you say you want to do, or to stick with what you set your mind to? It’s a tiring and frustrating cycle that many people experience, and it can often lead to feelings of inner defeat and dejection that result in self-blame. Take heart. Human motivation is a complex system that involves and is impacted by diverse factors. By the end of this read, hopefully you’ll have a better understanding of how your motivational makeup actually works and how to better align yourself with it to cultivate lasting change and stay committed to the goals you set for yourself.  

The Duality of Motivation: Wanting Versus Liking 

Modern neuroscience reveals that motivation involves two distinct yet closely intertwined components – wanting and liking. It is important to note that the two are not synonymous. It is possible to enjoy or like the idea of something but not have the desire or drive to pursue it. You might see this play out with someone struggling with depression. Vice versa, it is possible to have the drive or desire in pursuit of something that you don’t genuinely like or want to keep pursuing. This pattern is often what plays out for people stuck in addiction cycles. Dopamine is the primary neurochemical at play when you think of wanting – of desire, reward seeking, pursuit, and drive. It’s the neurochemical that gets released when you’re envisioning what’s for dinner on your drive home from a long day at work after not having had time to eat lunch all day. It is the pleasure-seeking part of the motivational or reward pathway and rises when there’s a sense of anticipation of future reward or payoff. The actual attainment of the reward, then, is correlated with a different neurochemical concoction that involves primarily our endogenous opioids, a prime biological marker of pleasure or liking something. It is the primary neurochemical that gets released when you finally get that first bite of dinner upon arriving home from work absolutely famished. Interestingly enough, the pleasure-seeking part of our motivation system is just as satisfying and therefore reinforcing of behavior, if not more so, as the attainment of the reward itself. In many ways, seeking is the reward. It feels exhilarating, exciting, and good. The cliché saying “the journey is the destination” holds some water here from a neuroscientific standpoint. When motivation dips into your day-to-day living, the wanting is most often what’s been impacted. Realizing the distinction between liking versus wanting can help you frame your strategies to sustain motivation by reestablishing a sense of genuine desire rather than seeking quick fixes for temporary pleasure.  

Motive Matters: Extrinsic Motivation Versus Intrinsic Motivation 

Extrinsic motivation stems from factors or pressures outside yourself that may include things like family or cultural expectations, verbal praise from others, social status, receiving an award or pay raise, maintaining physical needs such as housing or work, relational closeness with others, and things of the like. Intrinsic motivation stems from within yourself and is rooted in your core values, interests, desires, beliefs, and a more inherent sense of personal satisfaction. Neuroscience reveals that intrinsically motivated people experience greater self-agency and more sustainable experiences of reward processing than those more heavily influenced by extrinsic driving factors. Too much weight given to external rewards can cast a haze over internal drive which often results in a lackluster or more short-lived experience of reward, not to mention a fractured sense of self. While both forms of motivation hold power in the workings of human motivation, when it comes to lasting change and transformation, extrinsic motivation is more likely to come up short while intrinsic motivation takes the cake.   

Behavioral Activation Feeds Behavioral Motivation 

An excess amount of time spent in our head or our thoughts in planning, imagining, or wishing for change to happen, stunts motivation toward action. You cannot think your way into action. You must act your way into action. From this perspective, the order of things is not motivation first that leads to action, but rather action first that fuels motivation for further action. It is not typically a task or act in its entirety that you feel avoidant toward or paralyzed in overwhelm about. More times than not, it is merely the initial ‘oomph’ required to begin the task that acts as the greatest hurdle to engage with the task altogether. For example, reading more books in the new year feels overwhelming and has an indistinguishable starting point; however, reading the first page or even the first sentence of the first chapter in a book sounds more attainable. If the action you have set before yourself seems insurmountable or too broad or vague, then action rarely comes. Less is often more when it comes to cultivating and sustaining motivation toward motion. When it comes to New Year’s resolutions in particular, the roots of the word “resolution” actually trace back to the late 14^th century, stemming from French and Latin meanings of which include “to loosen; the breaking or reducing into simpler forms or parts”. Most people find that breaking a larger desirable change, such as a New Year’s resolution, into smaller steps reduces overwhelm and fuels a sense of confident motivation to complete or achieve the desired outcome. Once that initial and smaller act of beginning the task is conquered, it can actually feel more difficult to walk away from a goal without completing it than it feels to see it all the way through. This sort of scaffolded behavioral activation can function as a form of helpful trickery on the brain and its motivation network.  

Motivation and Prediction-Error Neurons  

Recent neuroscience has uncovered what’s come to be called prediction-error neurons that play a role in the brain’s function as a “prediction machine”. What this means is that the brain is constantly and automatically generating predictions or expectations about future rewards or outcomes, typically based off past experiences. When an actual outcome differs from your brain’s predicted outcome, it surprises your brain and prediction-error neurons fire within the brain. This causes your reward pathway to adjust motivation levels based on those prediction errors. When an outcome exceeds your brain’s predicted outcome, neurotransmitters within your brain’s reward pathway fire more intensely, reinforcing behavior and enhancing motivation to repeat that behavior again. Conversely, when outcomes fall short of your brain’s predicted outcome, neural firings within your brain’s reward pathway decrease, leading to decreased motivation to repeat that behavior. Novel challenge, when scaffolded with intention as discussed earlier, can result in unpredicted success which can cultivate powerful positive prediction errors within your brain, leading to behavioral reinforcement and increased motivation to maintain that same behavioral change. 

The Prefrontal Cortex Acts as the Guardrails for Motivation 

If dopamine, endogenous opioids, and other powerful neurochemicals are the driver of motivation, the prefrontal cortex of the brain is the GPS system so to speak. The prefrontal cortex is the brain’s command center, in charge of planning, decision-making, self-regulation, and critical thinking. In the realm of motivation, the prefrontal cortex offers direction and control, functioning to evaluate the value of potential rewards, weigh risks, and inhibit distractions. Motivation without proper prefrontal surveillance is really rather aimless. The prefrontal cortex helps transform raw and abstract desire into concrete goals, sustainable habits, and meaningful action. It is the prefrontal cortex that aids you with persistence and the ability to delay gratification, both critically important functions for long-term sustainable change. 

The Impact of Emotions on Motivation 

The amygdala is a part of the brain that processes emotion, particularly fear, and acts as the brain’s alarm system or security guard to identify real or perceived threat. The amygdala plays a role in human motivation, assessing risk and counting possible costs. The amygdala has motivations of its own which primarily revolve around keeping you safe – physically, mentally, and emotionally. Procrastination, comparison, competing impulses, overthinking, analysis paralysis, perfectionism, and other similar internal experiences inhibit your motivation to move toward certain goals. These are all forms of fear responses or protective mechanisms often triggered by the amygdala to protect you when engaging in change and walking new terrain.  

It requires a great deal of curiosity and radical honesty with oneself to take inventory of possible fear points related to certain change or action. Perhaps there is a dread for the simple discomfort of effort that comes with doing something outside your rote routine. Perhaps there is a fear of failure, a fear of looking stupid, a fear of embarrassment, a fear of letting others down, a fear of not getting the result you hoped for, a fear of actually being successful, a fear of losing your sense of self or finding your sense of self, a fear of not being good enough or of things not going perfectly. If you’re struggling to start a task or stick with a plan for change, you might need to consider “Am I more motivated by underlying fear, or some other emotion, right now than I am by the thing I say I want to do?”. Take inventory of yourself and your habits. It is a psychological truth that humans naturally gravitate toward the thing they truly genuinely desire. The story in your mind might say, “I really want to take up pottery throwing as a new hobby this year”, but an honest inventory of your habits might reveal that most of your free time and energy continues to go toward Netflix browsing. Perhaps this is an indicator that you are more motivated by emotional factors such as familiarity, comfort, or control than you realize.   

Final Reflections 

The newfound knowledge and understanding you now have about human motivation is important but will remain ineffective if not acted upon in tandem with genuine and continual self-reflection. Ongoing internal self-curiosity is a cornerstone for sustainable motivation-based efforts that are most aligned with your naturally in-built wiring and workings. As you wrestle with whatever it is that you may currently be struggling to get yourself to move toward – some new habit, change, or resolution – take a moment to turn toward yourself with a curious heart posture as you would a friend or a child, and consider some of the following reflective prompts: 

“What thing or feeling am I pursuing with greater gusto than the thing I say I want? Is that thing/feeling worthy of my constant pursuit or does something need to change?”  

“What is my natural response to change? Do I tend to embrace it or resist and shy away from it? Why? When did that become a pattern for me?” 

Envision yourself one year from now. What has that version of yourself done to get to where they are, that you are currently resisting? What qualities does that version of yourself embody that you currently yearn for? How did they become that?   

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Hannah Lemmon

About the Author

Hannah Lemmon

M.A. Ed, LPC

Encompass Therapist

Hannah Lemmon holds a Master of Clinical Mental Health Counseling degree from Malone University and is a trauma-informed Licensed Professional Counselor. Hannah is passionate about the integration of faith-based components into therapeutic treatment as it helps to facilitate sustainable health and healing within the mental, emotional, physical, relational, and spiritual elements of her clients' lives. She uses an integrative and attachment-focused approach to meet the unique needs of individuals of all ages and backgrounds.